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Cancelled theme park projects you wish had come to fruition

Matt N

CF Legend
Back in the mid-90’s there were plans for a Warner Bros Movie World Park and film studios to be built in Hillingdon, close to the M25 & M40, and 20 mins drive from Thorpe Park. They struggled to get planning permission approved and the project was dropped in 1997. I grew up nearby and remember there was a lot of opposition to the project from locals at the time, who are now facing much worse disruption with HS2 being built across the same location...

They were apparently going to search for a new location somewhere between London and Birmingham but that obviously didn’t come to anything and we saw the Madrid park open in 2002 instead.

The park would have brought some much needed competition to the Tussauds / Merlin parks here in the UK and likely a couple more B&M’s as well!

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/hollywood-heads-for-hillingdon-1318871.html
That would have been great! I do also remember reading about similar proposals for a park themed to Harry Potter near to the WB studios in Leavesden, but I think that may have been planned later than this project you mention!
 

nadroJ

CF Legend
Nothing groundbreaking if you're a big Disney nerd like I am, but both Westcot and Disney's America are places I still dream of being able to visit. Also Beastly Kingdom because I NEED to see how they would have dealt with the idea of having a unicorn communicate with you telepathically.
 

Matt N

CF Legend
Being from Essex originally this is one that always stood out for me as a disappointing cancellation even if i never actually believed it would ever get built. The idea of such a coaster 30 mins from my house had shivers running down my spine at the time.

Sorry for the late reply, but... did I just read that the drop would have pulled -3.8G? Is that even a safe level of negative g-force, as I believe Steel Vengeance pulls -2G, and look how mental people say that thing is! Even the infamous Rolling Thunder hill on El Toro only pulls -2.2G (I use the word “only” very loosely here!)!
 

emoo

Hyper Poster
The London Resort is still intended to be on a similar sort of scale to the one announced in 2012, as far as I’m aware, so what elements of the first iteration do you miss, out of interest?

No actual elements, everything was mostly just an idea or hearsay anyway and development plans change on projects all the time. But the tag line of UK's Disneyland could never be lived up to. It means different things to different people and the team at the time hadn't been to one which gives a strong impression that didn't know what they were talking about. Like when people call a flat ride a roller coaster and you face palm inside.


On another note, was there suggestions of putting a bar and/or hotel in any of the Tower of Terror rides or was that just fan fiction?
 

adrenaline1996

Mega Poster
Hi guys. Some of you may have seen that I posted some concept art from a past Six Flags Dubai proposal (if you haven’t, here it is: http://www.themeparx.com/six-flags-dubai/),...

Just saw the plans, it looked like it would have been a great park, kind of feels like that they've used design cues from it for Six Flags Qiddiya. Got a question though: who was the manufacturer of the Steeplechase (is this a coaster, or just a track ride?).

Steeplechase SFDL.PNG

A project that I wish came to fruition wasn't a big one, but in December 2015, Gateway Campsite in Llanelli, Wales, announced plans to open a theme park, to make the holiday park into the resort [Source: https://riderater.co.uk/5544/7-rollercoaster-theme-park-plan-for-south-wales/]. According to a illustrative plan, the park could have included a Vekoma Boomerang, Vekoma Stingray and Gerstlauer Bobsled Coaster as examples [Source: https://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1659340].
Gateway Llanelli.jpg

EDIT:
Just a couple of editions, I would love to have seen the alternative plans for Icon at BPB (i.e. Plans from Vekoma and Intamin).

Also, I preferred the original plans for Dreamland Margate, when it was going to be opened as a *proper* heritage amusement park: https://www.joylandbooks.com/scenicrailway/heritageamusementpark.htm.

2ND EDIT:
Also, does anyone have more detailed plans, like those for Six Flags Dubailand, for the Six Flags China / (Newer) Dubai parks?
 
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roomraider

Best Topic Starter
Just saw the plans, it looked like it would have been a great park, kind of feels like that they've used design cues from it for Six Flags Qiddiya. Got a question though: who was the manufacturer of the Steeplechase (is this a coaster, or just a track ride?).

View attachment 8415

That whole park plan image is just such a horrible mess. There's a Tatsu clone labelled mega wooden coaster. An El Toro clone labelled water flume coaster. What appears to be an old Vekoma suspended coaster labelled children's wooden coaster, 2 B&M hyper coaster layouts it appears and a host of other inconsistencies.

All I'm saying is I wouldn't put too much stock in that map. The plan was also a while before S&S came out with their steeplechase design I think so it could have been anyone or anything really.
 

toofpikk

Mega Poster
This is a fairly weird one but something that only twigged for me a few weeks ago when looking through old RCT files and It finally clicked.

Its a fairly well known curiosity that in 2002 before Thope Park settled on Colossus they looked at putting in a B&M launched coaster on the site. A plan that can be seen here
[pic]
Source with other images and ditched plans: https://www.southparks.co.uk/history/the-drawing-board/alternative-plans/

Now the design in that image is very rough (I mean look at that cobra roll).

The second part of this story comes from John Wardley. Way back in the early 2000s John put up a zip file containing a number of roller coaster designs buillt in RCT1 on his website. At the time these were actually password protected but someone cracked that password and the designs were shared widely amongst the RCT community at the time.

Until last week it never twigged that one of these designs was actually a mock up of the ride shown in the plans above which clears up some of the weirdness in that image.
[pic]
Obviously its still a rough approximation of the ride layout but it shows the hill over the water was to be a zero-g-roll and the oddly twisted hills in the plans are actually corkscrews. While not an amazing looking ride by any account really it would have been an interesting alternative to the Colossus we have now.

Theres a video somewhere of an interview with Wardley regarding computer softwares for designing theme park rides, and if I remember correctly he highlighted RCT in particular and said it could well be used as the future of designing theme park attractions, and (again if my memory doesnt fool me) he displayed that B&M layout you've posted in it. Completely forgot about it until I saw your post. Might try and find the vid.
 

JoshC.

Strata Poster
The Thorpe woodie where Saw currently stands is one I'd have loved to have seen (though I can't find any pictures of it anywhere atm), and for a couple of reasons..

-Wood at Thorpe!
-It would have shared Loggers' tunnel, which would have seen that redeveloped, and quite possibly lead to Loggers not being left SBNO
-I highly doubt we'd have seen the Saw IP attached to a woodie. Whether an IP would have been attached is a different question, but the success of the Saw IP led to huge increases for Thorpe, and also helped convince Merlin IPs were the way forward. One can only wonder how different Thorpe and Merlin might have been as a result.

Also there were rumours of Towers getting a RMC / woodie in 2017 in Forbidden Valley, before the Smiler incident happened. Fairly certain if that had happened I'd have enjoyed that more than Wicker Man.
 

JoshC.

Strata Poster
Yep, that was the one!

Oh man, what an improvement that would be over Saw. Anyone know why it fell through?

I can't remember the exact story, but I believe those plans were drawn up before the Merlin takeover of Tussauds (around early 2007). When Merlin took over, they wanted a different direction, with something that was more marketable and something that would be more appealing for an IP to be attached to it. Lo and behold, Saw with its easy-to-market beyond vertical drop came about, and a horror IP was always the plan.
 

Matt N

CF Legend
Does that mean that GCI would likely also have built the cancelled Project Shark at Alton Towers in 2008? For those of you who don’t know what it is, not much ever came out about it, but according to Tales from the Towers, it would have been an area behind what is now Cloud Cuckoo Land (built on an area that was formerly known as Coaster Corner but is now a backstage area), and it would have featured two rides; a wooden coaster and a shoot-the-chutes ride similar to Tidal Wave at Thorpe Park.
 

roomraider

Best Topic Starter
Something else that would have been great to see is the original planned design for X-Sector and Oblivion at Alton Towers.
The plan was to turn the area in to a Steampunk themed area called Port Discovery which reminds me a lot of the Jules Verne area at DisneySea in Tokyo.
Obviously this didnt happen and the plans were ditched (I assume due to costs) and the somewhat more concrete orientated and blandly generic X-Sector was born.

Obliv_SP.jpgObliv_SP2.jpg

However one part of the plan that did happen although in a cut down form was the retheme of Black Hole where some of the Jules Verne inspired architecture was installed giving some idea of what the whole area could have looked like if the plans had come to fruition
BH Jules Verne.jpg

I find it quite weird that 17 years later Efteling did what Alton Towers almost did and built a Steam Punk themed Dive Machine with Baron 1898.
 

Howie

Donkey in a hat
Something else that would have been great to see is the original planned design for X-Sector and Oblivion at Alton Towers....
...However one part of the plan that did happen although in a cut down form was the retheme of Black Hole where some of the Jules Verne inspired architecture was installed giving some idea of what the whole area could have looked like if the plans had come to fruition
View attachment 8461

I find it quite weird that 17 years later Efteling did what Alton Towers almost did and built a Steam Punk themed Dive Machine with Baron 1898.

Good post Room' thanks for that, I never knew about the alternate version of X-Sector, very interesting. That steampunk retheme of The Black Hole kinda makes sense now. At the time I just remember mourning the loss of the retro space theme, rather than engaging with the new steampunk thing (I was still basic GP back then, hadn't even heard of the word 'steampunk'! )
 

Matt N

CF Legend
Something else that would have been great to see is the original planned design for X-Sector and Oblivion at Alton Towers.
The plan was to turn the area in to a Steampunk themed area called Port Discovery which reminds me a lot of the Jules Verne area at DisneySea in Tokyo.
Obviously this didnt happen and the plans were ditched (I assume due to costs) and the somewhat more concrete orientated and blandly generic X-Sector was born.

View attachment 8459View attachment 8460

However one part of the plan that did happen although in a cut down form was the retheme of Black Hole where some of the Jules Verne inspired architecture was installed giving some idea of what the whole area could have looked like if the plans had come to fruition
View attachment 8461

I find it quite weird that 17 years later Efteling did what Alton Towers almost did and built a Steam Punk themed Dive Machine with Baron 1898.
I would have loved Port Discovery to have been chosen as the theme for that area! It just seemed so fitting with Alton Towers’ whole brand at the time, and it just looked so nice!
 

toofpikk

Mega Poster
someone I used to play alot of RCT3 with delved deep into the would've beens and could've beens of Alton Towers and recreated a lot of them. obviously its RCT3, and the files are quite a few years old now, but they're a cool glimpse of a sort of (?) render of what could've been.

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